The Old Believeness in Russia appeared in 17 century, when feudal system in Russia began to change. The Patriarch Nikon's Church reform started with bloody reprisals.The supreme church authority in Russia in every possible way tried to strangle the Old Believers movement since the first days of its existence.
All "differently-thinking" people who was not consent with church reforms, was banished in monasteries and prisons, executed, burnt on fires, without sparing even women and children.
Trying to avoid persecutions by all their forces, many Old Believers had to ran abroad - in Turkey, Austria, Poland. Later Katherine II, the Russian empress, issued the manifest which permitted all living abroad Old Believers to return home and to settle on free territories, the main of which was Siberia.
Photo Documentary / Photo Journal Story by Russian photographer Igor Sherman (Hits: 44408)

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